Saffron and pistachio have both had a very good two years in fragrance, separately. Pistachio has gone from a niche gourmand curiosity to one of the most requested notes in the category. Saffron has been quietly working its way through niche perfumery for longer than that.
What almost nobody has written about is what they do together, which is a shame, because the combination is more interesting than either of them alone.
What does saffron smell like in perfume?
Saffron is warm, dry, slightly bitter and faintly leathery, with a metallic edge at the top that reads as almost medicinal in the first few seconds.
That bitterness is the part people are not expecting. Saffron in food is associated with richness and colour, so the assumption is that saffron in perfume will be golden and sweet. It is not. It is closer to dry hay, warm leather and something sharp and iodine-like that softens quickly.
In perfumery saffron is used as a heart note and as a connector. It sits between spice and leather and has a natural affinity for rose, amber, oud and woods. What it mainly contributes is tension. A composition with saffron in it does not go soft.
What does pistachio smell like in perfume?
Green, sweet, buttery and nutty, with a milky quality underneath. Softer and rounder than almond, and much sweeter than sesame.
Pistachio is almost always a constructed accord rather than an extraction. Perfumers build it from lactones for the creaminess, aldehydes and green materials for the fresh top, and a little almond or heliotropin for the nutty centre. That is why two pistachio fragrances can smell noticeably different from each other, and why some of them read as ice cream and others as the raw nut.
Its job in a composition is comfort. It is warm, edible, familiar and easy, which is exactly why it has become so popular and also why it can become boring on its own.
What saffron and pistachio do to each other
They solve each other's problem.
Pistachio on its own is pleasant and slightly formless. It is sweet and creamy with nothing to push against, which is why a lot of pistachio fragrances feel like a dessert and then stop being interesting after twenty minutes.
Saffron on its own is sharp and a bit austere. The bitterness and the leather make it compelling and difficult, and it can read as medicinal to people meeting it for the first time.
Put them together and the pistachio rounds off the metallic edge of the saffron while the saffron gives the pistachio a spine. The result is a nutty, warm fragrance that stays dry and does not collapse into pudding. The bitterness stops it being sweet. The creaminess stops it being sharp.
It is a genuinely old pairing in food, which is where we took the idea from. Persian confectionery has been putting saffron and pistachio in the same dish for centuries, and a piece of sohan brittle is more or less that combination held in caramelised sugar.
What else belongs in the accord
On their own the two notes are a top and a heart with no floor. A saffron and pistachio fragrance needs a base or it evaporates into a nice idea.
The usual supports:
- Bitter almond, which extends the saffron's bitterness upward and makes the opening read as marzipan rather than as metal.
- Warm milk or lactonic materials, which sit under the pistachio and keep it creamy through the middle.
- Honey, for the sweetness the pistachio implies but does not deliver by itself.
- Benzoin, a warm resin that holds the whole thing down and adds a faint vanilla without adding sugar.
- Soft leather, which picks up the leathery side of the saffron and gives the dry down somewhere to go.
That stack is № 01 Saffron Pistachio: saffron and bitter almond at the top, roasted pistachio and warm milk through the heart, honey, benzoin and soft leather at the base. The leather at the bottom is the part that stops it being a gourmand you get tired of.
Is it a gourmand or a spice fragrance?
Both, which is roughly the point. It sits in the territory people have started calling savoury gourmand: still edible, no longer a dessert. There is more on that shift in savoury gourmand and what is replacing the sugar bomb.
If you want to place it against the other two in our range, № 01 is the sweetest of the three and still drier than most gourmands on the market. № 02 Burnt Sugar is louder and more caramelised. № 03 Sesame Skin has no sugar in it at all.
Who it suits and when to wear it
It is not seasonal in the way heavy ambers are. The saffron keeps it dry enough for a warm day and the benzoin keeps it warm enough for a cold one.
Where it does change is with heat. On a hot afternoon the pistachio comes forward and it reads sweeter. In cold air the saffron and the leather dominate and it reads drier. Same bottle, two fragrances, which is worth knowing before you decide whether you like it based on one August morning.
It is genuinely unisex. Neither note is gendered in any conventional way, and the leather in the base pulls against the sweetness enough that it does not land as a feminine gourmand.
Wearing it with something underneath
№ 01 is built to go on top rather than underneath. It has the most interesting opening of our three, which is exactly what you want in the upper layer.
Over № 03 Sesame Skin it becomes the combination we wear most: toasted sesame and cardamom on the skin, saffron and pistachio over the top, sandalwood and honey meeting in the dry down. The sesame makes the pistachio read as nuttier and less sweet, which is the opposite of what you would guess.
The mechanics of doing that properly are in how to layer perfume oils.
Trying it
№ 01 comes as a 10 ml roll-on oil and as a 15 g solid balm, which is the same scent in a format with nothing to spill.
If you would rather not commit to a bottle on a description, it is in the Discovery Trio at 2 ml alongside the other two for eighteen euros, and the whole eighteen comes off your first full size order.